As a white heterosexual American male, there are certain things — OK, plenty of things — I don't need to think twice about. One of them is travel. There obviously are places where being a white, heterosexual American male will work against me (probably the American part, mostly), but usually I'm not too concerned for my well-being in the places I am most likely to visit.

A visitor to Colorado or Washington can enjoy all sorts of fine legal activities in those states. Ski. Hike. Drink local beer. Eat local food. Take a scenic drive on a twisting mountain highway. Smoke pot.

The cliche says there's no better way to test compatibility than to travel with someone. And a pair of therapists who specialize in relationships — and who happen to be married — say that's true. Somewhat.

Even the owner of my hotel had the good sense not to be where I was. In a couple of weeks, he said as I checked in at the Whaleback Inn, he and his wife would head to Florida to begin a weeklong Caribbean cruise.

For more than 50 years, the Virgin company has dabbled in life's more pleasurable pursuits — music, cruises, space travel — so jumping into the hotel business was probably inevitable. And indeed, the company's first hotel opened Thursday in downtown Chicago.

I spend most of the year telling you about my travels, so I always enjoy the opportunity to turn that around and hear about your journeys. I recently wrote of my 2014 travel highlights, both big and small. Readers poured in their recollections, and here they are, edited for space. Happy travels in 2015. I look forward to hearing about them.

Every year should bring some memorable travel into every life. It can be as grand as reaching a distant mountaintop or visiting a country 10,000 miles away. It can be as small and quiet as reading a local newspaper in a distant coffee shop while the rain pours outside.

Before a recent trip to New Mexico, I did what people do before a trip: I reserved a rental car. In this case, it was an economy-class car from Budget for $282. It seemed a reasonable cost for 11 days in the desert.

I've taken up the issue of reclining airplanes seats a few times now and firmly established myself as someone who supports reclining — but also being polite, thoughtful and communicative with the person behind you. I was ready to leave the subject alone, but then the patron saint of the nonreclining movement got in touch, and I couldn't resist the opportunity to chat.

Picking out the visitors who have labored their way to the top of one of the two volcanoes on this tiny island in Lake Nicaragua is not difficult. Just look for the people relaxing as aggressively as possible.

The beheadings of American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff were as tragic as they were revolting, but they existed in something of a logical context. Both men were covering a war zone that few journalists (including me) have the guts to cover. There were risks, and they knew it. Foley previously had been detained for more than a month in Libya and saw a colleague killed. Still, he returned to the region.

The decision about whether to recline one's airline seat has been a flier's most vexing question since tempers turned hot over that issue around Labor Day. Here are some simple truths about the ethics, and future, of leaning back at 38,000 feet.

We seem to be hearing the death knell for airline bereavement fares. The long-dwindling practice has nearly bottomed out in 2014, as most major American airlines have essentially done away with breaks for grieving fliers.

Roger Brooks travels 350 days per year and spends most of them trying to create a place where you want to be. Brooks, 61, a tourism consultant, has worked with more than 1,000 destinations in 45 states and places abroad since the early 1980s. This is an edited transcript of our conversation.

For decades, visits to New York City have meant Broadway shows, Fifth Avenue shopping and slack-jawed stops at Times Square and the Statue of Liberty. Those experiences will always remain quintessential New York, but for the last year the city's tourism bureau has urged visitors to get a little more creative.

I had been flirting with the idea of climbing Mount Rainier in July and tried goading a dozen friends into joining me for a trek to the top of the 14,410-foot peak southeast of Seattle. It's a relatively technical trek, involving ice climbing, ropes, axes and a fair bit of nerve that seemed like a worthy adventure.

For someone approaching 60 years old, Joey Carroll is quite at home with the word "bro." And as a bronzed and lean Carroll led me through a Wednesday morning surf lesson on the waves off Waikiki, the word was welcome encouragement for a first-timer.

My recent column on the joys of traveling alone launched a steady flow of email from readers who shared their own stories of solo travel. Far more was submitted than can fit here, but this is a sampling. Submissions were edited for space.

Let's begin with the obvious, and most pressing, question: How in the name of Jumbo the Elephant (he's real — look it up) did a south-central Wisconsin town of 12,000 become the circus capital of the world?

When we want to relax, we head to the beach and do nothing. When we want culture, we travel to a new country and dive into museums, neighborhoods and restaurants. The former is relaxing. The latter is enriching and memorable but the source of an unfortunate truism: Travel can leave us exhausted and needing a vacation from our vacation.

Game shows occupy a unique corner of the American brain. Who can't name Vanna White's chosen profession? Who can't place that immortal shout of "Survey says!"? Do the words "double jeopardy" actually invoke the law for anyone? Even if we haven't seen any game shows in years, we are quite familiar with their existence.

I have been a professional travel writer for nearly six years, which requires not only frequent travel but frequent solo travel. I have explored Hawaii alone, France, Mexico, several Caribbean islands and nearly 40 U.S. states.

One of the most tired cliches is that so-and-so doesn't actually sell such-and-such; they sell peace of mind. Well, in this case, it's true. The question is whether there is a market for that peace of mind among airline customers.

Before bed on the night I arrived in the San Juan Islands, the island chain that sits as far northwest as you can go in this country before hitting Canada, I decided, as any reasonable person would, not to set an alarm clock.

Now that the Transportation Security Administration's Pre-Check program is open for application to any American, its reach is growing quickly: Eight airport enrollment centers have opened nationally since November, and at least 40 more are expected by the end of the year.

Every few songs it would happen: The ukulele launched into a furious strum, the bass began to gallop, the guitar jangled to life, and the three powerful voices behind those instruments erupted into a harmonious whirl. Then someone danced.

The report doesn't undertake any added science but simply synthesizes previous studies, and the involvement of an insurance company might be cause for skepticism, but a recently issued white paper reaches a conclusion always worth repeating: Travel is good for you.

I recently shared my travel highlights from 2013, which included moments both huge (the top of Mount Kilimanjaro) and small (watching the rain fall in La Jolla, Calif.). I asked readers to share theirs, and they responded in force.

When reflecting on my 2013 travel highlights, I was surprised to find moments both impossibly grand and so small that they were sublimely, and subtly, perfect. I want to hear about your travel highlights from 2013 and will print them in a future Travel Mechanic column, but first, here are mine:

More than 25 million people have left their coats and shoes on their bodies, their laptops and 3-ounce liquids packed away and walked through a metal detector rather than a body scanner since the 2011 launch of the Transportation Security Administration's PreCheck program.

Travel is inherently uncomfortable. The long lines, longer waits, tight spaces, unfamiliar terrain, communication difficulties and displacement from our routines can make travel unnerving and exhausting, even as it stimulates and educates.

One key to enjoying a vacation is to know what sort of traveler you are. Sounds simple, right? It's not always. I recently chatted with a woman who plunked down her hard-earned money on a Jamaican cruise, only to realize she didn't like cruises. It seemed like wasted time and money, she said.

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic — During four days in the historic heart of the Dominican capital, I saw men gather every afternoon in the central square to play dominoes, usually ringed by crowds of onlookers.

Baseball's playoffs are here, and the St. Louis Cardinals, as usual, are in them. One of the nation's great baseball cities also has become an increasingly admirable beer city in recent years. Though home to Anheuser-Busch, there are far more interesting options than Budweiser to quench your pre-game thirst. Here are three of them:

A few weeks ago, I consulted friends, colleagues and acquaintances across the country to weigh in on their cities' tourism cliches that were both worth seeing (the National Mall in Washington) and avoiding (the Hollywood Walk of Fame).

About 10 years ago, in sweet, magical Barcelona, Spain, I was walking down the bustling and heavily touristed La Rambla when about six guys in their late teens or early 20s, clustered on the side of the pedestrian way, hollered something at me.

SHANKSVILLE, Pa. — Exactly one American flag flaps in the brisk, rural Pennsylvania breeze at the Flight 93 National Memorial, which is the same number you'll find at most other national parks and monuments. That lone flag makes the memorial at once confounding and stoically brilliant.

The guest-services kiosk at Fashion Outlets Chicago, the gargantuan new high-end outlet mall near O'Hare International Airport, rents strollers, wraps gifts, changes currency and can even get your clothes dry-cleaned within 24 hours. But its unlikeliest service also is one of the most convenient imaginable: It will check bags for flights on any of five airlines and print your boarding pass.

DENVER — One of the benefits of vacationing at the nation's largest beer festival is the expectation that you will drink beer. Such expectation allows shaking off politeness, decorum and that ever-nagging "responsibility" to head directly to a bar after depositing your bags at the hotel. I mean, it's why you're there.

There's a popcorn shop in downtown Chicago that generates long tourist lines, and most locals, like me, don't get it. I don't think the popcorn is better than at any other place that puts a little effort into its popcorn, and if your time in Chicago is limited, waiting for this popcorn seems like a waste.

MONROE, Wis. — When entering a Mexican-tinged barbecue restaurant with Wisconsin flair, the only thing to do is embrace your fear (and if a Mexican-tinged barbecue restaurant with Wisconsin flair doesn't scare you, it should).

At the kickoff of the International Gay & Lesbian Travel Association's annual convention this month, that organization's strides — not to mention the entire nation's — were no more clear than on a simple United Airlines banner beside the lectern that read: "Diversity flies with us."

Flying foreign airlines can be so much more pleasant than our domestic options. On a recent KLM flight to Amsterdam, the Dutch airline behaved as if it was in the customer-service industry, not merely transporting a bunch of people from one point to another.

After dinner and a walk around their Viking River Cruises ship on Russia's Volga River last May, Charles and Cecilia Ford went back to their cabin. Charles, 82, was in a good mood, his wife said, cracking jokes and singing during their walk.

On a flight from Israel to London a few years ago, the airplane video display wouldn't work for Margalit Francus' teenage son. The boy, who was 14 or 15 at the time, grew overwhelmingly frustrated. He screamed, he cried and he threatened to open the plane door.

News of Samoa Air charging passengers by the pound, rather than by the seat, came so suddenly that some people thought it was an April Fools' Day joke. Not only was the announcement no joke — the airline hadn't retracted it by press time — it eventually could become an industry standard.

In the last Travel Mechanic column, I examined the fare prognostication tools used by Kayak and Bing, which advise travelers whether to buy plane tickets while searching those websites or to wait. Both sites use data from scores of past searches to predict whether you're finding a fare at its lowest point or if it may fall.

"So what brings you here?" my massage therapist, Serena, asked while leading me from the Aspira spa's hot tub to the soft table where she would rub me down in a haze of sandalwood oil for the next 50 minutes.

DETROIT — Many people can't see past this city's abandoned buildings and overgrown lots, and that's sort of fair. A city once boasting 2 million people and an unbreakable auto industry is down to 700,000 and apocalyptic decay in every direction. The only time I've had to pass through a metal detector when entering a bank was in Detroit.

Not only did I recently complete a 10-day trip with a mere three pairs of underwear, but by the end of those 10 days, no one seemed to mind sitting next to me. The trick: None of the underwear was made of cotton.

CHICAGO — For years, the dining options beyond security in O'Hare International Airport's Terminal 5, for international travel, were so limited that travelers couldn't buy a cup of coffee. Next year, however, those heading to all corners of the world via Chicago will be able to eat food prepared by some of the city's most recognizable names, buy pricey jewelry and get a massage.

The well-chronicled labor troubles at American Airlines are nothing but headlines to most of us, until it comes time to fly American. Then we learn firsthand about the hopefully temporary state of an airline that statistically has lagged behind its competitors in recent weeks for delays and cancellations.